World History in Goods

Learn more about the interconnections between commodities, human history, technology, and economic development with key titles on the global history of goods, selected by RCL editors. Resources for College Libraries (RCL) features core titles for academic libraries, curated by Choice/ACRL subject specialists. In Syndetics Unbound, RCL Librarians recommend a selection of the 90,000+ titles available at rclweb.net.

Updated April 1, 2025
RCL Librarians
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Beer : a global journey through the past and present
Arthur, John Wood
Paper Book
A fascinating exploration of beer, ancient and contemporary, and its role in shaping human societyBeer is and has always been more than an intoxicating beverage. Ancient beer produced in the Near East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas was a food that had a remarkable role in shaping the...
The world of sugar : how the sweet stuff transformed our politics, health, and environment over 2,000 years
Bosma, Ulbe
Paper Book
The definitive 2,500-year history of sugar and its human costs, from its little-known origins as a luxury good in Asia to worldwide environmental devastation and the obesity pandemic. For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. After all, it serves no necessary...
Salt : a world history
Kurlansky, Mark.
Paper Book
Homer called salt a divine substance. Plato described it as especially dear to the gods. Today we take salt for granted, a common, inexpensive substance that seasons food or clears ice from roads, a word used casually in expressions ("salt of the earth," take it with a grain of salt") without...
Water : the epic struggle for wealth, power, and civilization
Solomon, Steven.
Paper Book
"I read this wide-ranging and thoughtful book while sitting on the banks of the Ganges near Varanasi--it's a river already badly polluted, and now threatened by the melting of the loss of the glaciers at its source to global warming. Four hundred million people depend on it, and there's no backup...

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